Thoughts from the intersection of science, pseudoscience, and conflict.

For the last year, alongside learning about the joys and challenges of new motherhood and doing my academic work, I’ve also been quietly working on a new project. That new project is finally in a place where I can share it with people: I’m thrilled to announce that last week I signed a book contract with Twelve Books !

My book (which is tentatively titled “Origin”) will be a history of the Americas, from initial peopling to the present day, through the lens of genetics. But I’m also going to use this as an opportunity to continue my blogging mission on a bigger scale: to teach people about the fundamentals of genetics, ancient DNA, and showcase stories from the remarkable work of my colleagues in the field of anthropological genetics.

I’m not just going to be talking about the science either. The news of Elizabeth Warren’s genetic testing results this week has highlighted just how interested the public is in the intersection of questions about ancestry and identity…and just how confused people are about what DNA testing results mean and don’t mean. I want to do my small part to help people understand these issues, particularly when it comes to claims about Native American ancestry, as I did earlier this week in my new piece for Forbes. And oh yes…. I will be talking about race and genetics. I may do it imperfectly, but I’m not going to shy away from that topic when it’s so critical to this present moment.

I’m acutely aware of the fact that I’m a non-Native person writing about extraordinarily sensitive issues, and I am grateful for the help that many of my Native American colleagues have generously offered for this project. I’m also grateful to the many scientists (both Native and non-Native) whose research I will be featuring (if you would like to chat with me about your work, email me or hit me up at the AAPAs!).

So, if all goes well, I should have a finished manuscript in about a year from now, and a published book a little while after that. I’ll let everyone know more when we are closer to having a book (!) for you to read. Thank you all so much for your support and good wishes–they really mean the world to me.

Last week, our son Ox had an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine. I’m glad, and I’m grateful.

First, the downside. Ox came home from daycare with a fever hovering around 100° F/38° C. That’s high enough to worry first-time parents, and it was persistent. By Friday night he’d been feverish for days and couldn’t sleep. When we measured him at 103°/39°, we finally called the pediatric nurse hotline at the local children’s hospital. The nurse was cool, calm, confident, and knowledgeable, just as you expect a nurse to be. She listened to a first-time dad ramble on about his boy’s fever and then let us know that it sounded like a reaction to the MMR vaccine he’d had the week before.

For his first birthday, Ox got a checkup, the MMR, and a flu shot.

It’s possible that he simply came down with a normal fever and the timing was a coincidence. A lot of reported adverse reactions to vaccines are coincidences. But his experience closely fits the profile of a known vaccine reaction. Fevers are one of the most common adverse reactions to vaccines, affecting about ten percent of kids after their MMR shots. Our experience was worse than the typical fever; Ox spiked above the usual ceiling of 103° and it lasted a little longer than the standard two days.

Ox is fine today, but I don’t want to minimize the downside. Fevers can be dangerous, of course, leading to dehydration and other serious complications. And while Ox came through just fine, he suffered. He spent a few hot, cranky days unable to sleep or eat comfortably. That hit us, too. As new and first-time parents we don’t have a lot of perspective on what’s serious and what’s not; when the baby’s feverish for that long, it’s scary and upsetting. It also disrupts our lives; we’re very busy but Ox is our priority, so when he’s sick, it’s hard to keep all the other plates spinning efficiently.

Sick little boys get Star Wars stories.

But it’s good news, over all. Ox spiked a scary fever and spend a miserable few days waiting for it to break, and I’d have him do it again in a heartbeat. Because that fever is an indication that his immune system is responding to his MMR shot, which means he’s developing a powerful, natural immune response to dangerous diseases that could leave him deaf, sterile, or even dead.

Ox suffered an adverse reaction thanks to his pediatrician and the nurses, and I’m sincerely grateful for it. They gave him a shield against pathogens that evolved specifically to attack and ravage him, and that have seriously hurt unvaccinated kids in our community. And they helped make him into a shield in turn, protecting other children through communal immunity.

To Ox’s nurses and doctors and to all the doctors and nurses giving vaccines every day: thank you. You’re standing between our child and a world of suffering, and we’ll always be grateful—even when it causes a fever.

When I heard that Mick West was publishing a book on how to help talk people out of conspiracy theories, I said a bad word. I’m writing my own book on a similar subject, and it’s frustrating to see someone else get one out first. But I also preordered it immediately. West stands out as one of the most careful and thoughtful public figures debunking conspiracy theories, and I was eager to see what he had to say on the subject. Then I realized that if I asked for a review copy, I wouldn’t have to pay for it. (Negotiation is my specialty, remember?) Now that I’ve read it, I’m thinking of ordering a hardcopy to lend out–it’s a message that deserves to be spread.

I don’t do very many book reviews, but I jumped at the opportunity when the New York Times recently asked me to review Carl Zimmer’s new book “She has her mother’s laugh: The powers, perversions, and potential of heredity.”* As I was very familiar with Carl’s science writing, I had high expectations as I began reading, and he definitely exceeded them. This is a delightful monster of a book; 500+ pages that roam through subjects as diverse as Tasmanian devils’ facial tumors, CRISPR’d mosquitoes, and the legal system of property inheritance in ancient Rome. The theme connecting all these stories is our conception of heredity: what does it actually mean in an age of gene editing and surrogacy? (the title suggested for my review by my editor).

I found this subject personally fascinating, because I was able to connect with it strongly from the perspective of a new mother. Here is an excerpt from my review:

“She Has Her Mother’s Laugh” challenges our conventional wisdom about heredity, especially as we enter the new realms of surrogate pregnancy and gene editing. One of the most astonishing insights is that mothers don’t just pass traits to their children — they receive them as well. I read Zimmer’s book (occasionally out loud) while feeding my baby son. Like Zimmer, I had genetic counseling and my partner and I experienced the same anxieties as he did. But unlike Zimmer, I was able to assuage our fears using a drop of my own blood. That’s because my baby’s DNA, floating freely in my bloodstream, could be tested for hundreds of genetic disorders at an early point in my pregnancy. We took great comfort in the test, without realizing all of its implications. The baby wasn’t just sharing his genetic secrets during the pregnancy. Fetal cells can persist for years after birth; as I sit and write these sentences, I may very well be a chimera: a mixture of some of my son’s cells and my own. This microchimerism may even have eventual effects on my health, although it isn’t fully understood. And he may carry some of my immune cells, too.

I knew a bit about post-pregnancy microchimerism before reading this, but there’s a ton of details that I was unaware of, and now I want to go read the whole literature on the subject. Here’s a quote from the book that just astonished me:

“Fetal cells don’t simply migrate around their mothers’ bodies. They sense the tissue around them and develop into the same type of cells. In 2010, Gerald Udolph, a biologist in Singapore, and his colleagues documented this transformation with a line of engineered mice. they altered the Y chromosomes in the male mice so they glowed with the addition of a chemical. Udolph and his colleagues bred the mice, and then later they dissected the brains of the mothers. They found that the fetal cells from their sons reached into their brains, sprouted branches, and pumped out neurotransmitters. Their sons helped shape their thoughts.”

!!!!!

Even if that’s not been established as occurring in humans as well, that is really incredible.

Another major focus of the book that’s perhaps even more important from a social perspective was its treatment of the complex topics of heredity, biological race, and eugenics. In this regard, I think that it’s a much better book than most that I’ve read on the subject, up there with Adam Rutherford’s “A brief history of everyone who ever lived”. It’s accessible without sacrificing accuracy, contextualizing the science with history and nuance.

This book is Zimmer at his best: obliterating misconceptions about science with gentle prose. He brings the reader on his journey of discovery as he visits laboratory after laboratory, peering at mutant mosquitoes and talking to scientists about traces of Neanderthal ancestry within his own genome. Any fan of his previous books or his journalism will appreciate this work. But so, too, will parents wishing to understand the magnitude of the legacy they’re bequeathing to their children, people who want to grasp their history through genetic ancestry testing and those seeking a fuller context for the discussions about race and genetics so prevalent today.

Yesterday BBC Radio 4 aired an hour long program that explored “the continuing legacy of the anti-vaccine movement on the anniversary of one of its most notorious episodes, and explore its impact on health, on research and on culture both at home and abroad.”

The indefatigable science journalist Adam Rutherford explored the history of Wakefield’s attempts to promote the link between vaccines and adverse health effects on the program, interspersing clips of Wakefield speaking in the media with interviews by journalist Brian Deer and public health officials. In the last third of the program, he interviewed both Colin and myself about the ongoing consequences of Wakefield’s advocacy here in the United States. We discussed how Wakefield has tapped into the world of conspiracy theories and a larger movement of distrust of expertise and institutions to promote his ideas (it didn’t make the final cut in the program, but as one example Colin wrote extensively about hearing Wakefield speak on the Conspira-Sea Cruise). We talked about communication with vaccine-hesitant parents and how empathy and good scientific information spread through networks of family, friends, and community leaders can overcome fearmongering. We discussed how being new parents affects our experiences as science communicators, particularly in the realm of vaccine issues. We also spoke about our experiences going to see Andrew Wakefield’s documentary Vaxxed, and how the movie (and the anti-vaccine movement in general) spreads false, damaging, and hurtful rhetoric about persons with autism. (To the ASAN members who were protesting at the movie, I hope you get a chance to listen to this! We talked about how shamefully you were treated in response to your excellent outreach efforts).

Many thanks to Adam and Graihagh Jackson for having us on. I think it’s a fitting commemoration of a shameful incident in the history of medicine, and I hope it helps at least a little bit to push back against the harmful and wrong ideas being spread by Wakefield.

We closed 2017 with some actual good news: the W.H.O. reported that measles deaths in 2016 worldwide fell to an all time low of 89,780. According to the New York Times, “the decline — a public health triumph, as measles has long been a leading killer of malnourished children — was accomplished by widespread donor-supported vaccination that began in the early 2000s.”

This is fantastic news! But unfortunately the NYT chose to illustrate their article with yet another photo of a terrified child being held down by two adults, one of whom is jamming a needle into his arm.

As many of us repeatedly point out on twitter, these photos provoke fear and mistrust rather than convey a positive message about vaccination.

As new parents ourselves, we are now intimately acquainted with the terror that goes along with suddenly being responsible for a precious new life. We question and second guess every decision we make about play, feeding, clothing, childcare and traveling. It doesn’t matter that we know rationally how adaptable children are—the emotions take over.

One decision we don’t question is our choice to vaccinate our child Ox (not what it says on his birth certificate) on time and according to schedule. We’d actually been looking forward to his two-month pediatrician appointment, because after he received his shots we would feel much better about our upcoming holiday travels.

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated this blog! I’ve spent all summer working extremely hard to get some academic writing done before our new baby arrives (he’s doing great, and due on Monday!). But although I’ve been fairly quiet here at Violent Metaphors, I’ve been doing some things elsewhere and I thought I should do a quick end-of-summer roundup of everything in one place.

I’ve been writing once a month or so about genetics and archaeology over at The Guardian’s science blog The Past and the Curious along with a fantastic team of archaeologists (my posts are archived here). If you’re interested in human history/prehistory, do check out our blog! That’s where most of my genetics/arch posts are going to be going in the future, with the science literacy/conspiracy theory/vaccine stuff staying here.

My archaeologist colleague Professor Fred Sellet and I were recently interviewed by Ira Flatow about North American prehistory on a live show of Science Friday. Getting to be on a science program that I’ve listened to for over a decade was one of the highlights of the year for me (although there are some things I wish I’d said differently/more clearly in retrospect. It turns out that it’s incredibly nerve-wracking to do a show in front of a large audience, and I could definitely use more practice!).

Finally, I was delighted to be on Tides of History, an incredibly cool history podcast by Patrick Wyman. Patrick’s not only an incredibly smart historian, he’s also my go-to guy for boxing and MMA analysis. Definitely give him a follow on Twitter if you are interested in either of these subjects!

That’s about it for now…I’m working on a series of posts about vaccinating as a brand-new parent, and the first should be up here in a couple of days, so keep an eye on this space!

This will be a relatively short post, updating my series about the ConspiraSea Cruise and the people I met there. For those who haven’t read it, the cruise was a week-long conference for conspiracy theorists. One of the speakers was Sean David Morton, who claimed he could teach people to stop paying taxes, win any court case, and make money by creating esoteric financial instruments. Eighteen months later, he’s been convicted of tax fraud and issuing false financial instruments. And on Monday, he skipped his sentencing hearing and became a fugitive.

Sean, if you’re reading this, call a lawyer. Please. You tried your legal theories in court and they failed, just like they’ve always failed every time anyone has ever tested them in court. They haven’t worked. They don’t work. They won’t ever work. I know you don’t want to hear this from a skeptic and a critic, but I think you also know it’s the best thing you can do for yourself and your family. Call a lawyer, and get some expert advice. They’re going to tell you to turn yourself in, and you should. It’s the best way to get ahead of this situation.

I have a new blog on archaeology out over at The Guardian’s science page, where I’m contributing a piece about once a month on archaeology and biological anthropology. As I write things there, I’ll link to them here for interested readers. Here’s an excerpt:

Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812 was marked by terrible logistical disaster and resulted in profound loss of life within his own army. Although his forces reached Moscow, they found the city abandoned and burning—a deliberate tactic on the part of the Russian army to prevent the French soldiers from finding provisions.

The practice of requiring soldiers to “live off the land” to supplement their rations likely contributed a great deal to this loss of life. This rendered them extremely vulnerable to the Russians’ scorched earth tactics which left them little to forage or steal. But Napoleon’s Grande Armée was ethnically and socially heterogeneous. Were their origins, social status, and access to food during this time of deprivation reflected in their diet? This is one of the questions that Holder et al. set out to address in their new paper, Reconstructing diet in Napoleon’s Grand Army using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis.

I normally avoid sharing personal details and information about my family publicly on social media. This post is going to be one of the rare exceptions.

When my Dear parents post went viral a few years ago, I heard from a lot of people who opposed vaccines demanding to know whether I had children, and insisting that if/when I did, I would come to understand how evil vaccination was. I found this line of argument irritating because the vast majority of parents understand how beneficial vaccination is for their children and their communities, and appreciate that they are able to save their children from diseases that were once significant threats to their health and safety.

What’s really interesting to me is how much this statement reveals about the way an anti-vaccine or vaccine hesitant (I make a distinction between the two) parent thinks. The overwhelming scientific evidence showing the safety and efficacy of vaccines will not suddenly change just because someone becomes pregnant. Instead, this argument shows that the person making it is not taking that evidence into account at all. He or she is relying on emotional reasoning, selectively listening to “facts”, arguments, and people that support a predetermined decision (to delay vaccination or not to vaccinate at all), and ignoring everything that contradicts that decision. This is a cognitive process known as motivated reasoning, and we are all prone to it. However, the consequences resulting from employing motivated reasoning to buy something we don’t need and to make decisions like whether or not to vaccinate should be obvious. Allowing the voices of anti-vaccine advocates to frighten you into delaying or forgoing vaccinations could potentially cause great harm to your child and your community.

So now I’m having a baby. My partner and I are very excited, happy, and nervous about what will change in our lives. But do you know what has not–or will not–change? My understanding of science, my trust in my doctors’ expert opinions, and my commitment to fully vaccinating my child on schedule.

We shared our news on Facebook, but I forgot to set the privacy of the announcement to “friends only”. (If you friend me on FB, please don’t be offended that I don’t accept your request; I post a mixture of public and private content and I try to keep the latter for family and close friends). Amid the happy congratulations, I began to get some other types of comments.

This went on for a few days, until I gently pointed out to the person posting that it was a bit rude to spam someone’s pregnancy announcement. To their credit, they apologized and deleted the thread. It was a jarring, to say the least, and another good reminder that my policy of keeping personal details private is there for a reason.

I’m about to break that policy again when I say (without going into things too much), that for several reasons my pregnancy is classified as “high risk”. One of the things that I learned very early on as a result is the shocking amount of bad information that exists out there for expectant mothers. For me, this has led to a general policy of simply staying off of internet parenting groups entirely. (Obviously that’s not a solution for many mothers, as they find the support and community valuable). If I do have a question (as I did the other day about whether a city I’m traveling to soon is a Zika risk) I take it straight to my doctor’s office, either in person or on the phone. Tara Haelle and Emily Willingham’s book The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resource has also been incredibly helpful. I hope other parents will find it useful too.

To those parents who are trying to sort through the contradictory information thrown at them, you have my complete sympathy. But I encourage you to recognize the value of expertise over emotion in making important decisions (this book is next on my reading list). Understand that while most parents who are vaccine hesitant are simply frightened and misled, many of the loudest voices arguing against mainstream scientific consensus are making money by deceiving you.

If you are looking for resources to help you talk to your vaccine hesitant friends or family, here’s a guide that Colin (an expert in negotiation) wrote.